Brugnato is a village of a few hundred inhabitants in a side valley of Liguria, and for eight centuries it had a bishop of its own. The diocese was set up in 1133 and was one of the smallest in Italy: a village, a valley and this church, which today is a concathedral together with those of La Spezia and Sarzana.
What to see
The first building goes back to the seventh century and depended on the abbey of Bobbio, founded by the Irish monks who came to Italy with saint Columbanus: it is to him that the church is dedicated, along with Peter and Lawrence. The present structure is of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Romanesque in plan and later altered.
Under the church the excavations found an early Christian cemetery, which is why the site was chosen: people built where they were already burying. Inside there are frescoes and furnishings, and beside it the bishop's palace, out of proportion with the village precisely because the village was an episcopal seat.
Visiting
The church is in the centre of Brugnato, in the province of La Spezia, twenty minutes by car from the motorway exit, on the road that runs from the Vara valley down to the sea; free entry, with hours tied to services. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
Brugnato is on the road to the Cinque Terre and nobody stops. Do stop: the village is walled, has three parallel streets and is walked in twenty minutes, and after seeing the cathedral of a village of a few hundred souls you look with different eyes at the religious geography of Italy, made of hundreds of tiny dioceses.